It was impossible to find anybody at last week's meeting of the International Monetary Fund willing to believe that the US will actually default on its debts. The universal belief was that the game of chicken would end before Thursday's deadline for raising the debt ceiling, if perhaps only at the eleventh hour.
Even so, the budget battle overshadowed the meeting of the fund. The first question for every finance minister or central bank governor was: "How bad could it get if there is no deal?" Very, very bad was the unsurprising reply. Five years ago this weekend, Alistair Darling and Mervyn King flew home early from the IMF meeting to put the finishing touches to the bail-out plan for Britain's banks. Other governments were doing likewise. Nobody wants to go through that again.